I often worry about forgetting things. Not my house keys, or paying bills — although I’d prefer to remember those things too — but bigger things. Memories, mostly.
I worry that by frying my brain daily with a cocktail of screens — my phone, then iPad, then laptop, then TV— that I might be blasting out the deeper memories and replacing these corners of my brain with useless trivia, memes and Whatsapp emojis instead. I know this isn’t how our brain storage works — it’s not one-in-one-out (like Sainsbury's at the moment), but I worry that I will forget how to locate my colourful memory bank, that will no doubt fade over time anyway. I want to be able to access my good memories easily like a page in a book, and maybe that’s why I write and journal so much. Maybe it’s a control thing — I just like knowing they are there. Like the fact that I print off my photos off Instagram using Snapfish and put them in an actual physical drawer. I want to know that my memories won’t get deleted, even if the Internet breaks. Maybe it's strange to obsess over 'saving' thoughts onto a giant floppy disk, but it's something I often think about.
Of course, day to day, we don’t necessarily have time to sit down and go through old photo albums, sift through our past thoughts or think about that album we bought when we were 14. Life is usually busier than this, less simplified: a million things to go, see, do. This period of time we are currently in is obviously terrible, and I don’t need to explain all the reasons why — but one of the silver linings has been the shift in time and space to think, allowing my brain space to wander, and to meander down some paths that went untrodden for a while. I think my daily walks have also prompted this rediscovery of old thoughts and feelings, and I have the time right now to dwell on them. I feel like my vivid childhood memories are coming back — through intense dreams, but also randomly throughout the day. I’ll be cooking, stirring the pot, and suddenly remember a conversation with an old school friend; a teacher; a song I used to listen to in 1999, or a certain page in a childhood book I used to read as a kid. I found a 90s acoustic playlist on Spotify, and fell into a whole of old Alanis Morissette songs, rediscovered Incubus (my teen crush Brandon Boyd is now in his 40s); and messaged my old school friend who I hadn't spoken to in years — someone I associate with my adolescence, and all these bands and gigs. It’s like I am reaching my arm into a pitch black treasure chest and pulling out things I hadn’t thought about for decades, things I forgot were there. Maybe this is what it feels like to reconnect with yourself.
Why, when stuck at home during a pandemic, do we seem to be spiralling into deep nostalgia? I asked Dr Emma Hepburn (aka ThePsychologyMum) why this might be happening:
“People are subjectively describing feeling more nostalgic. There’s a few interesting studies on nostalgia that suggest it gives us bit of mood boost and makes us feel good, however ironically we seem to have more nostalgic thoughts when we are feeling low. In the current situation we might be more prone to feeling down and nostalgia may provide us a bit of a positive mood boost. We tend to reflect on the past at anniversaries, birthdays or key moments in our life. The current situation may be acting as a pause button, or key moment: where we reflect and think about the past. At the current time it is hard to make plans, which may mean that instead of focusing on planning the future, our attention shifts to our memories and a focus on the past.”
This makes total sense to me — I feel like I’m reaching for stimulus that may boost my mood momentarily, and when the future looks so uncertain, the past seems to give me some concrete clues, feelings and meaning. And of course, perhaps it can feel more tempting to revisit the past when ‘staying present’ feels so tricky right now.
(You can pre-order Dr Emma Hepburn's book now, called A Toolkit For Modern Life and it is BRILLIANT.)
